Nearly 15 million tablets were sold in 2010, and the numbers show up to 40 million by the end of 2011. More and more business professionals are using them for daily tasks, and now that a camera is mounted on the front of most devices, video web conferencing programs are becoming a bigger market. But how does the video web conferencing software stack up to its desktop counterpart?

Video Web Conferencing on Cisco WebEx

The iPad might be dominating the tablet market, but Cisco Cius has a video web conferencing device of its own, a seven-inch screen with a webcam and powerful processor. This best web conferencing software runs on iPad as well but both offer high quality streaming video and deliver a face-to-face experience.

Users can tap into a meeting from an e-mail invite, or open the app and enter a meeting number; VoIP is free too. A participant list shows you how they’re joining the conversation, by desktop, tablet, or smart phone, and whether or not they have video capabilities. You can pass presenter control to others in the group by using the participant list and you can share presentations, applications, and documents. With all these tools and the ability to expand your screen, the tablet application is a strong competitor to the desktop version.

Fuze Meeting and its Video Web Conferencing App

Fuze Meeting allows users to share screens and run meetings online. The Android tablet app includes VoIP so users can hear what’s going on if they have no phone to dial into the meeting. You can share documents and files as well as enjoy the high-definition video and audio. Fuze also has an app for the Android phone, and the software is a free application. If you want to host a meeting, you do have to subscribe to one of the plans, however.

CDMA data and voice streaming has been an issue in the past, but that is solved with the addition of VoIP. You can share video files and documents, and you can annotate and highlight notes. Video web conferencing hosts can control the meeting from their iPad, and the host can dial guests directly from the iPad. The differences that users of Fuze will find on the iPad version compared to the desktop, is that they will have to leave the meeting to add files because the iPad does not multi-task.

Adobe Connect Video Web Conferencing

Adobe has made this video web conferencing application very similar to the desktop version. This system allows a multi-point video web conferencing meeting overview where you can watch all meeting activities at once–you can see the other guests, the guest list, chats, and notes in separate panels, and if you tap on the panel, it expands that area. Guests can ask questions of the other by pressing on the chat icon and entering questions using the touch screen keyboard; you can also receive private chat messages in the app.

A poll tool allows hosts to get an idea of how useful the meeting was/is and the poll answers are available in real time. An advantage that iPad 2 users will have over desktop users is that the iPad 2 has a front and back facing camera which the user can utilize.

Concluding Thoughts on Video Web Conferencing

The biggest names in video web conferencing are taking the tablet market very seriously, as you can see from the applications mentioned above. While the best video conferencing software may not completely replace your desktop version, these video web conferencing options are working towards that kind of functionality, which will certainly make tablets as integral to business operations as desktop computers are now.